ENVISIONING RESPONSES TO CLIMATE CHANGE IN EEYOU ISTCHEE Report on the Regional Forum on Climate Change Eastmain, Eeyou Istchee - James Bay, QC 6-7 November 2018 The Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee) Cree Nation Government July 2019 Environment and Remedial Works 700 Rue de la Gauchetière O, Suite 1600 Montreal, QC, Canada, H3B 4L5 Analysis and writing Jean-François Bissonnette1; Pernilla Talec2; Kaitlin Lloyd2; Lucas Del Vecchio2 Event planning and organisation Pernilla Talec; Kaitlin Lloyd; Kelly Leblanc2; Jean-François Bissonnette; Marleen Bovenmars3; Lucas Del Vecchio. Facilitation Jean-François Bissonnette; Pernilla Talec, Murray Humphries; Annie-Claude Belisle; Allison Ford; Christine Ha; Katarina Kuhnert; Manuelle Landry-Cuerrier; Tian Qi Che; Duncan Warltier; Andrea Mcleod, Derius Gilpin-Mark, Kaitlynn Hester-Moses, Kyleen Weistche, Cynthia Gilpin, Cescily-Ann Gilpin. Funding Climate Change Preparedness in the North, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada. Acknowledgements Authors would like to thank all participants, and especially the Cree Nation of Eastmain for hosting this event, along with the Cree Youth Council, the Cree Trappers Association and the Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay. 1 Département de géographie, Faculté de foresterie, de géographie et de géomatique, Université Laval 2 Cree Nation Government, Department of Environment and Remedial Works 3 InsightShare Photo Credit: Kaitlin Lloyd 1 SUMMARY ● Over 100 people gathered in Eastmain to participate in the Regional Forum on Climate Change organized by the Cree Nation Government department of Environment and Remedial Works. ● The Forum was designed to encourage participation in the identification and design of responses to address the impacts of climate change. ● Three areas of focus were identified – 1) Biodiversity, harvesting activities and the land; 2) Cree culture, education and research; and 3) Health, quality of life, housing and technologies. ● To address climate change impacts, participants in the forum have suggested the following recommendations: – Improve local capacity and empower communities to carry out initiatives that could improve resilience to climate change impacts; – Develop more effective regional coordination mechanisms to support opportunities of sharing knowledge or networking between communities; – Modifying best practices to fit the new environmental conditions, such as harvesting strategies, and emergency preparedness frameworks; – Broader implementation of the Cree Nation Government construction recommendations and guidelines for community infrastructure; – Uphold and mobilize traditional knowledge through education and research as an efficient means of building capacity to respond to climate change; – Implement activities to maintain physical, psychological and spiritual well-being by ensuring connection to the land. ● The Forum provided an opportunity for participants to start working toward common solutions, and identify priorities related to improving their resilience to climate change impacts. Photo Credit: Reggie Tomatuk 2 INTRODUCTION Cree of Eeyou Istchee have always experienced changes in the environment resulting from anthropogenic or natural processes. Cree communities have proven resilient to these changes and have been able to pursue their traditional activities and occupancy of the land throughout history. In the past decades, climate change has become a growing concern among scientists and policy makers around the world. Throughout Eeyou Istchee and elsewhere in the world, there are already noticeable climate change impacts. Environmental transformations directly or indirectly related to climate change affect most aspects of Cree way of life such as access to the land, nutrition, living conditions, along with health and spiritual well-being. Although climate change is to some extent inevitable, much can still be done to mitigate the impacts by ensuring adequate responses are put forward. The need to respond to climate change impacts also provides opportunities for Cree communities to increase their resilience to environmental risks. Improving resilience largely depends on capacities to identify the needs and allocate adequate resources to cope with climate change impacts. Resources may be conceptualised notably in terms of knowledge, culture, means of collaboration, regulation, technology, or financial capital. Climate change adaptation is a social process, which in some contexts, largely depends on the capacity to maintain open communication channels between the people and those responsible of allocating resources. Investments in climate change adaptation must match local priorities, as identified by the people, to avoid maladaptation. The Cree Nation Government has been working with Cree communities and their members to better understand climate change impacts locally and regionally. The goal of these efforts is ultimately to support measures that will enable communities to respond to climate change impacts, so that Cree people may pursue their traditional activities on their ancestral land, while also continuing development. While still engaged in documenting climate change impacts in communities, the Cree Nation Government decided to provide opportunities for members of all Cree communities to identify priorities related to climate change. Worldwide, many jurisdictions already have climate change adaptation plans, and the Regional Forum provided an opportunity to start reflecting on the contours of such plans for Eeyou Istchee. 3 THE REGIONAL FORUM ON CLIMATE CHANGE The Regional Forum on Climate Change was organized by the Cree Nation Government to provide a platform for people to express their concerns about climate change, and design appropriate responses to cope with its impacts. Over 100 people gathered in Eastmain, on November 6-7, 2018, for this purpose. Residents from the 10 Cree communities of Quebec participated in the Forum, along with representatives from the Cree Nation Government, the Cree Trappers’ Association, the Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay, the Ministry of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Health Canada, researchers and representatives from McGill University, Université du Québec en Abitibi- Témiscamingue, Ouranos, the James Bay Advisory Committee on the Environment and other stakeholders from various entities. Many participants provided presentations about their work on climate change in Eeyou Istchee, the measures that are already in place, along with the opportunities that exist to fund and develop new initiatives related to climate change adaptation. OBJECTIVES The Forum was designed to encourage participation in the identification and design of appropriate responses to address climate change impacts. The objective was to provide a space that would enable a bottom-up design of responses to deal with climate change impacts. The goal was to set in motion a dynamic of collaborative work between people and communities, and between generations, to allow people to share their expertise and learn from each other. Participants engaged in discussions about responses to climate change and in doing so, were invited to appropriate the meaning of this phenomenon in their own words, according to their own reality. Climate change is a phenomenon that can be measured with scientific tools, yet its manifestations have a unique meaning for the people of Eeyou Istchee. This meaning is related to past and current use of the land and resources, it is also related more generally to Cree people’s history and culture. Moreover, the meaning of climate change cannot be dissociated from the way in which the people of Eeyou Istchee relate to their future. The Regional Forum launched a regional-scale reflection about responses to climate change and mobilized knowledge and experiences from each Cree community. In fact, climate change impacts are differentiated according to communities, whether they are located on the coast or inland, and South or North of Eeyou Istchee4. Also, climate change cannot be looked at in isolation from the history of natural resource management and development. As such, the impacts of hydropower, forestry and mining sectors on the land over the past decades have had important and cumulative impacts5. The Regional Forum provided a space to discuss the best means to monitor and contextualize ecosystem changes. For this reason, observations made by Cree people should be recorded in order to contribute to ongoing research, and better integrate traditional knowledge in research activities6. 4 M. Humphries, Wildfood and Climate Change in Eeyou Istchee, Regional Forum on Climate Change, Eeyou Istchee; Hennigs, R. and Bleau, S. (2017). State of Climate Change and Adaptation Knowledge for the Eeyou Istchee James Bay Territory. Report presented to the James Bay Advisory Committee on the Environment, Montréal, Ouranos, 41 p. + appendices 5 Bélisle, A.-C., 2018. Personal communication. 6 Coon, T., 2018. Personal communication. 4 METHODOLOGY The conduct of collaborative activities within the forum mobilized many people, whose role was to accompany the participants, and make sure they were able to participate at their best. A team of facilitators, most of whom were youth recruited by the Cree Nation Youth Council, was present to work with participants and provide some structure for discussions and exercises. On the first day, participants were assigned to one of three